How does install attribution work?

When ads are shown for your campaigns, we are able to detect when users click through and go to your app’s store page. However, our optimization algorithms need to know if users go on to install and use your app in order to allocate the best traffic. Therefore, we require advertisers to integrate a third-party attribution service. These external attribution providers will notify the Unity network when your app is installed, helping us detect which impressions lead to which installs.

The full process is roughly as follows:

• Unity Ads shows an ad from your campaign to a user. We send an impression event to your attribution provider.
• The user clicks on the ad and is sent to the App Store. We send a click event to your attribution provider.
• The user installs the app.
• The user opens the app. Your attribution provider sends an install event to Unity.

Without this process, we won’t be informed whenever a user installs your app as a result of your campaign, and your traffic will be reduced and eventually stopped completely. We rely on install data to optimize our network.

Our full documentation for install attribution can be found here:
https://unityads.unity3d.com/help/advertising/s2s-install-tracking

You can use Unity’s Ad Testing app to verify whether your game install attribution works:
https://docs.unity.com/acquire/en/manual/test-attribution-links